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polling. The most trying part of the contest was the ordeal of the hustings. These were temporary platforms erected in the square, at the market cross, or in some other open place of the borough or chief county town, where the candidates were proposed and seconded. The speeches were usually little better than mere dumb show. Each of the rival politicians made determined but usually vain efforts to convince the shrieking mob, amid showers of stones, mud, rotten eggs and dead cats, of the sublime virtue of his opinions, or of the utter depravity of the views of his opponent. The sort of item that was common in a candidate’s election bill before the Ballot Act was this: “To the employment of 200 men to obtain a hearing, 460s.” These men believed that the best way “to obtain a hearing” for their employer was to prevent his rival being heard; and as the hired mob on the other side was likewise animated by the same conviction, both candidates were equally shouted down. There is, for instance, the evidence of Bernal Osborne, a famous wit and Member of the House of Commons. “The honourable gentleman talked about the voice of the electors,” he said in a debate on old open-voting ways. “As if the individual voice of an elector was ever heard at a nomination, and as if there was not a general agreement to roar, to hiss, and become debased with drink! The true-born Englishman is said to delight in that day. Now, who are the true-born Englishmen?” he asked; and answered, “Why, the representatives of muscular Christianity—prize-fighters and people of that sort. I have spent as much money in retaining the services of those gentlemen as anybody in this House. One of my most efficient supporters in Nottingham was a man who was always clothed as a clergyman of the Church of England, but who was really an ex-champion of England, Bendigo by name.”
As an illustration of the treatment a candidate had to expect at the hustings, and of the style of speaking which was thought appropriate to the occasion, listen to Disraeli addressing the Buckinghamshire electors at Aylesbury. Received with a cry of “You look rather white,” he thus retorted: “I can tell you that it is at least not the white feather I show. [Laughter and cheers, mixed with
howling.] If any member of the melodious company of owls [loud laughter] wishes to address you after me, I hope that you will give him a fair hearing. [Interruption.] I can tell the honourable gentleman who makes this interruption that if it were possible for him to express the slightest common sense in decent language, I should be ready to hear him. In the meantime I must say, from the symptoms of intelligence which he has presented to us to-day, I hope he is not one whom I number amongst my supporters.” (Cheers and laughter.) Disraeli, still directing his attention to his opponents, further said: “Your most brilliant argument is a groan, and your happiest repartee a hiss.” A voice then exclaimed: “Speak quick, speak quick!” for he was a slow speaker, and he retorted: “It is very easy for you to speak quick, when you only utter a stupid monosyllable; but when I speak I must measure my words. [Loud cheers and laughter]. I have to open your great thick head. [Laughter]. What I speak is to enlighten you. If I bawl like you, you will leave this place as ignorant as you entered it.” (Cheers and laughter.)
Another picture of a scene at the hustings which I call up from my reading on the subject is of a painful kind. It was in the year 1865, when there was a contest for Westminster, and from the hustings erected in Covent Garden, at the base of St. Paul’s Church, John Stuart Mill, the Radical candidate, addressed the crowd. In his pamphlet, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Mill bluntly said that the working classes, though ashamed of lying, were yet generally liars. This statement was printed on a placard by Mill’s opponent and aroused against Mill the animosity of the working men of the division. At one meeting he was asked whether he had really written such a thing. He at once answered, “I did,” and scarcely were the words out of his mouth when, as he states in his Autobiography, vehement applause burst forth. The working men present were, according to Mill, so used to equivocation and evasion, that this direct avowal took their fancy, and instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that Mill was a person whom they could trust. But Mill does not mention the hostile reception he got when he appeared
on the hustings. Before the speaking commenced a member of the crowd asked an enthusiastic supporter of Mill which of the gentlemen on the hustings was the candidate. “There,” exclaimed the admirer, as he pointed at the author of the treatise On Liberty, “there is the great man.” “Then,” said the other, taking a dead cat from under his coat and flinging it at Mill, “let him take that.” When Mill afterwards spoke he was pelted by the porters of Covent Garden with the garbage of the market.
The mob influence exercised at elections—often the determining influence—might be intimidatory, but it was not always venal. These unsavoury arguments, dead cats and rotten apples, were at times the expression of sincere political convictions on the part of people without votes. As it was only by the use of violence in some form or another that non-voters could have weight in public affairs, the Chartists were opposed to the introduction of secret voting so long as the franchise was restricted to the comparatively few. They admitted that the ballot would be an excellent thing if universal suffrage were established under it. Until then they avowed their determination to see to it that the unfranchised part of public opinion should not be deprived of the chance of influencing the electors, under a system of open voting, by the methods of blacking eyes and smashing windows.
2
To convince Parliament of the beneficence of secret voting at elections took forty years of unremitting advocacy, though meanwhile the franchise had been enlarged. Grote, the historian of Greece, who sat as a Radical for the City of London from 1832 to 1841, annually moved a resolution in favour of the ballot. It was always rejected. On the retirement of Grote into private life in 1841 Henry Berkeley continued to move the motion every year, with the same want of success until 1851, when, despite the opposition of the then Whig Government, headed by Lord John Russell, he carried it by a majority of thirty-seven. Nevertheless, twenty-one years were
yet to elapse before the ballot was finally established by Act of Parliament. A Select Committee of the House of Commons, which sat in 1868 to inquire into corrupt practices at elections, reported in favour of the ballot as a measure likely to conduce to the tranquillity, purity, and freedom of contests. The undue influence which was exercised in various forms at open elections is strikingly set forth in the evidence taken by that committee. Its most common shape was the direct physical terrorism exercised by hired mobs. There was also the more subtle intimidation of tenants by landlords, of workmen by employers, of servants by masters, of tradesmen and shop-keepers by customers, and, more reprehensible still, the undue spiritual influence of ministers of religion, who, in the guidance of their flocks as to the way they should vote, did not scruple to invoke the terrors of the world to come.
The report of the Select Committee, which appeared in 1869, greatly helped to turn public opinion in favour of the ballot. In the following year W. E. Forster, a Member of the then Liberal Government, with Gladstone as Prime Minister, introduced a Bill abolishing nominations at the hustings and introducing vote by ballot. It passed through the House of Commons, only to be rejected by the House of Lords by 97 votes to 48, on the motion of the Earl of Shaftesbury. The arguments against the measure had been set forth long before by John Stuart Mill, one of the ablest and most distinguished opponents of secret voting. As the franchise was a public trust, confided to a limited number of the community, the general public, for whose benefit it was exercised, were entitled to see how it was used, openly and in the light of day. The ballot, therefore, meant power without responsibility. It was also cowardly and skulking. Under its shelter the elector was likely to fall into the temptation of casting a mean and dishonest vote for his own benefit as an individual, or for that of the class to which he belonged. The Bill was reintroduced in the following session of 1872. It passed again through the Commons, was sent up to the Lords, and, despite the renewed opposition of Lord Shaftesbury, was carried to the Statute Book. Since then the elector has been free to vote as he
pleased, according to the dictates of his conscience, his political convictions, his foolish whims and his wayward fancies without anyone knowing a bit about it. The Ballot Act was not, however, made the permanent law of the land. In the House of Lords an amendment limiting the operation of the Bill to eight years was accepted by the Government. Therefore, from 1880 the Ballot Act had to be renewed every year by being included in the Expiring Laws Continuance Act—otherwise the measure would have had to be reintroduced and carried through all its stages in both Houses—until 1918, when a clause of the Representation of the People Act transformed it from an annual into a permanent statute. Yet there is one election to which the Ballot Act does not apply—an election for the representation of a University. During the time allowed for the polling—about five days—electors can vote either personally or by proxy papers, which, having been signed before a justice of the peace, are sent by post to the University, and in either case the votes are openly declared before the presiding officer.
In the Life of Grote there is recorded an interesting conversation between him and his wife on the subject of secret voting after the Ballot Act had been passed. “You will feel great satisfaction at seeing your once favourite measure triumph over all obstacles,” said Mrs. Grote to her husband one morning at breakfast. “Since the wide expansion of the voting element, I confess that the value of the ballot has sunk in my estimation,” the historian replied. “I don’t, in fact, think the electors will be affected by it one way or another, so far as Party interests are concerned.” “Still,” said the wife, “you will at all events get at the genuine preference of the constituency.” “No doubt,” said Grote; “but then, again, I have come to perceive that the choice between one man and another among the English people signifies less than I used formerly to think it did. The English mind is much of one pattern, take whatsoever class you will. The same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise; the same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated though benevolent efforts to eradicate human evils, are wellnigh universal. A House of Commons cannot afford to be above its own constituents in intelligence, knowledge, or
patriotism.” But this must be said—thanks to the ballot, all parties are united in eliminating from the stock of political arguments rotten eggs, stale fish, dead cats, over-ripe fruit and decaying vegetables, and, in agreeing that in electioneering it is better to count heads than to break them. 3
One of the most memorable of General Elections under the Ballot Act surely was that held in December, 1918, following the passing of the Representation of the People Act and the close of the World War, when women voted for the first time. The scenes I saw in London on the polling day, that historic Saturday, made a profound impression on me. Women in thousands flocked to the booths as well as men. Many wives and mothers of the working class brought their babies in perambulators. What did they think of it all? They were not subdued in demeanour and thoughtful, in keeping with the greatness and gravity of the occasion. On the contrary, they were joking and laughing, as if quite elated at the notion that they should be voting for a Member of Parliament and a Parliament in which, as it turned out, a representative of their own sex was to sit for the first time in the person of Lady Astor, of the Sutton Division of Plymouth.
Even so, was not this the last word in ordered and organized democracy? Could there be, I asked myself, a more advanced and striking manifestation of the free citizenship in the most perfectly planned Republic? Then I wondered what the Barons of Magna Charta—whose statues I have so often looked upon in the House of Lords—would have thought of it, those feudal lords who, over 600 years before, extracted from an absolute King the first great enunciation of constitutional liberty? Nay, why go back so far and remotely? What would the working men who, as a protest against the denial of electoral reform in July, 1866, tore down the railings of Hyde Park, have thought of it? What they wanted was the extension of the franchise to male householders. They could never have imagined that their grand-daughters would have that which they
themselves did not then possess—the vote for a Parliament the least fettered in the world by a written Constitution and the most omnipotent in the exercise of its legislative powers.
4
The counting of the votes takes place on the night of the polling day, or the next day as the returning officer may appoint. In county constituencies, where the polling stations are many miles apart, it is impossible to commence counting the votes until the next morning; but in boroughs, where all the ballot boxes are delivered up to the returning officer within a quarter, or at most half an hour, of the close of the poll at 8 or 9 p.m., the counting is got through as a rule by eleven o’clock. No person may be present at the counting of the votes besides the returning officer and his counting clerks, the candidates and their agents, except by the authority of the returning officer, and everyone present is placed under an obligation to maintain, and aid in maintaining, the secrecy of the voting.
The first thing that is done is to check the number of votes in each ballot box with the return furnished by the presiding officer of the number of ballot papers issued at the polling booth, in order to see if they tally. All the ballot papers from all the boxes are then mixed up together in one great heap, so as to make it impossible to find out how the voting went in any particular polling district. The ballot papers are next placed on the table faces upward, so that the number printed in each case on the back—the only thing which might give a clue to the identification of a voter—shall not be seen. Any person who attempts to obtain the number of a voting paper in violation of the secrecy of the ballot is liable to six months’ imprisonment. The ballot papers are then distributed among the large staff of counting clerks seated at scattered tables in the room, and the counting of the votes recorded for the several candidates begins. There are two ways of counting in vogue. In one—the London way—the clerks are divided into pairs. One clerk is provided with a sheet of foolscap containing the names of the candidates with
a number of squares under each, and the other clerk goes through the ballot papers calling out the name of the candidate opposite to which the voter has placed his cross. If the vote is given for “Robinson,” a stroke is inserted in one of the squares under Robinson’s name; if it is given for “Smith,” a stroke is put in one of the squares under the name of Smith. Provision is made on each sheet for 250 votes to be thus counted, and when either of the candidates has received that number the figures for each are put at the foot—“Robinson, 250,” “Smith, 76”—and the sheet is passed on to the returning officer. Under the other system of counting, each clerk places on the table in front of him the ballot papers for each candidate in separate piles, makes them up into packets of fifty, placing an elastic band round each, and hands them over to the returning officer.
The work of the counting clerks is closely watched by an agent representing each of the candidates. All votes about which there is any doubt are referred to the returning officer. Any paper which has on it any writing or mark by which the voter could be identified is rejected. Some electors are so vehemently partisan that, not content with making the simple “X,” they add personal remarks about the candidates or comments on the political issues as the strong feelings of the moment prompt them. I remember at one election where only Liberal and Socialist candidates stood many angry Conservatives wrote across their ballot papers such phrases as “Betwixt the devil and the deep sea,” and “God help England!” Every voting paper so defaced is cast aside. Any paper which contains votes for more candidates than the elector is entitled to vote for is also void. There are also voting papers about which hang the element of uncertainty. On some the “X” is made on the candidate’s name; on others it commences in one square and ends in another. Other electors, again, impishly desirous no doubt of puzzling everybody concerned, make their “X” meet exactly on the line which separates the names of the candidates. Each paper thus irregularly marked is judged on its own merits, but the guiding rule is that the vote is given to the
candidate whose name appears within that section of the voting paper where the lines of the voter’s cross touch each other.
The candidates are also present in the room with some of their leading and more intimate supporters, and often with their wives, awaiting with such composure as they can command the result which is to realize or disappoint their hopes and ambitions. Sometimes the candidates never get into personal touch with one another until they meet in the counting-room. And though Party feeling usually runs high, those contests are not without their charming amenities. It was on such an occasion that Thackeray was paid what he thought was the greatest compliment of his life. He contested Oxford in the Liberal interest in 1857, and, meeting his opponent, Edward Cardwell, he remarked: “Well, I hope the best man will win.” “I hope not,” replied the Tory candidate. Notwithstanding all the care of the officials, aided by the vigilance of the candidates’ agents, mistakes are occasionally made, and, what is more annoying and perplexing, are not discovered until after the result of the count is supposed to have been ascertained, though not officially declared in the room. A bundle of counted ballot papers may fall unnoticed under the table, or may be erroneously placed in the batch of the wrong candidate. Surely no disappointment more bitter can befall a man than that of the candidate who within five or ten minutes of his feeling certain of being duly returned to Parliament finds there has been an error in the counting, and that he has really been beaten after all.
The returning officer cannot vote at the election; but should there be a tie between the candidates he may, if a registered elector, give a casting vote. At a by-election for South Northumberland in April, 1878, the candidates, Albert Grey (afterwards Earl Grey) and Edward Ridley (subsequently a Judge of the High Court), polled the same number of votes—2,912—a thing unprecedented in the case of a big county constituency. The sheriff declined to give a casting vote as returning officer, although himself an elector, preferring to make a double return by declaring both candidates elected. A few days later Mr. Grey and Mr. Ridley presented themselves at the Table of the
House of Commons, the oaths were administered to them, both signed the roll, and both duly took their seats. They were not, however, allowed to vote. In the scrutiny which followed it was found that a few of the voting papers were spoiled, and Mr. Ridley, having a majority of the correct votes, was awarded the seat.
So, too, in 1886, Mr. Addison, Q.C., was returned in the Conservative interest for Ashton-under-Lyne by the casting vote of the returning officer, who was also chief magistrate of the town. Mr. Addison sat in the House of Commons for six years, according to the jocular description of his opponents, as “the Hon. Member for the Mayor of Ashton-under-Lyne.” In the event of a tie, the casting vote of the returning officer is only operative if exercised on the declaration of the poll. In October, 1892, at a by-election for the Cirencester division of Gloucester, Colonel Chesters Master, the Conservative candidate, was declared Member, having defeated Mr. Harry Lawson (afterwards Lord Burnham), the Liberal candidate, by a majority of three. A scrutiny of votes was demanded by Mr. Lawson, and this showed that both candidates had polled the same number of votes. The sheriff, having ceased to be returning officer on the declaration of the poll, could not give a casting vote, and accordingly there had to be a new election, when Mr. Lawson was elected by a majority of upwards of 100.
Such awkward incidents, however, are very uncommon. The returning officer, at the conclusion of the count, has usually no other duty to discharge than publicly to declare the candidate to whom the majority of votes was given duly elected to Parliament, and he sends forthwith the return to the writ of election, bearing the name of the successful candidate, to the Clerk of the Crown at Westminster. The voting papers, the counterfoils, the marked copies of the register of voters, and all other official documents relating to the election, are also made up in a bag and sealed by the returning officer and forwarded to the Crown Office. To give an idea of the enormous amount of official papers used at a General Election, I have been told at the Crown Office that they weigh from 22 to 25 tons. In case there might be a demand for a scrutiny and recount of the voting
papers in any constituency, or a petition presented to declare the return null and void under the Corrupt Practices Act, all these documents are stored in the cellars of the Crown Office for a year and a day before they are destroyed. The writs are kept by the Clerk of the Crown until the Parliament is dissolved, when they are sent to the Public Record Office, where they are preserved.
5
A candidate declared elected by the returning officer, but whose return is questioned by petition, takes the oath and his seat in the House of Commons and serves in the usual course until the report of the two Judges who tried the petition is delivered to the Speaker and is by him communicated to the House. Jesse Collings, in January, 1886, as Member for Ipswich, while a petition against his return was pending, which resulted in his being unseated for reasons for which he was personally blameless, moved and carried the small holdings resolution, the famous “three acres and a cow,” which defeated Lord Salisbury’s Government and brought back to power again the Liberals under Gladstone. I remember a petition arising out of a contest at Exeter in the General Election of 1910 which had a curious result. The Liberal candidate was declared returned by a majority of four. The Judges who tried the petition disallowed five votes for the Liberal given by five men who were held to have been unlawfully employed as bill distributors during the election, and accordingly the seat was given to the Conservative candidate by a majority of one. On the day the decision of the Judges was announced by the Speaker I witnessed a very uncommon incident. This was the appearance of the wigged and gowned Clerk of the Crown, bringing the return to the writ for the Exeter election, and at the Table, in the presence of the Speaker and the Commons, amending the return by substituting “H. E. Duke” for “H. St. Maur” as the Member to serve for the borough. Immediately afterwards Mr. Duke took his seat in the House.
It is a long and elaborate process, this obtaining of the Verdict of the country; and rightly so, having regard to the momentousness of the issues that may be at stake. The philosophy expressed at a General Election may not always be thought very high or noble. Often it has but root in an idea of material well-being—that men and women who labour with their hands may enjoy a little more of the pleasures of life before the time comes for them to lie down and die. And that is a most excellent thing, and well worth striving for. But it is quite possible to have inaugurated at a General Election a mighty movement towards an entirely new conception or order of life, like the foundation of Christianity, the Reformation, or the French Revolution, and bring it about by the peaceful processes of parliamentary evolution. To say the least, a Nation can unitedly rise to a height of great glory by marching to the polling booths, and, by its votes, securing the success of a high moral cause. Anyway, nothing should be done to detract from the importance and impressiveness of the General Election. The one substitute for the ballot box that remains in this age is the match-box, not only as the symbol but as the instrument of Revolution by fire and blood, with the aid of a tin of petrol.
CHAPTER V
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE M.P.
1
At every General Election there is seen the old and familiar, but ever curious and interesting, spectacle of about twelve or thirteen hundred men—who, though selected at random from the general mass, yet vary so much in position, ability and temperament that they may be said to reflect collectively the very image of the Nation —engaged in wooing the constituencies which have at their disposal the 707 seats in the House of Commons. What are the irresistible allurements that compel this large body of men, the majority of them actively engaged every day in business or professional life, to spend their money and time, their strength and temper, in order that they may be given the chance of making a gift of their professional capacity and business experience to the Nation, expecting in return, as regards the mass of them, neither fee nor reward beyond a salary of £400 a year?
Macaulay on the subject is well worth giving ear to. Writing to his sister Hannah (subsequently Lady Trevelyan) on June 17, 1833, after a few years’ experience of the House of Commons, he says:
I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts men, who could sit over their tea and their book in their own cool, quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze uneasily on the green benches till three in the morning. Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary for me. My pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister’s company is sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well and cheerful, and let offices in Government and seats in Parliament go to those who care for them. If I were to leave public life to-morrow, I declare that, except for the
vexation which it might give you and one or two others, the event would not be in the slightest degree painful to me.
Sir George Trevelyan, in his Life of Lord Macaulay, not only corroborates his uncle as to the inexplicability of the charm of the House of Commons, but gives also from personal experience a still more forbidding description of what he calls “the tedious and exhaustive routine” of an M.P.’s life:
Waiting the whole evening to vote, and then walking half a mile at a foot’s-pace round and round the crowded lobbies; dining amidst clamour and confusion, with a division twenty minutes long between two of the mouthfuls; trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw; and sitting behind Ministers in the centre of a closely packed bench during the hottest week of the London summer.
If this were all that was to be said, it would, indeed, be hard to understand why a seat in the House of Commons should be regarded as an object to be sighed for, and schemed for, and fought for, and paid for by thousands of very astute and able men. The constituencies are not engaged at the General Election in fastening this burden upon unwilling shoulders. How incomprehensible, then, is the action of these who, having had experience of the hard and thankless lot of the Member of Parliament, its mental strain, its physical discomforts, yet labour unceasingly night and day during the weeks of the General Election to induce the electors to send them back again to the dreary round of routine tasks at Westminster. Indeed, Macaulay himself felt keenly the loss of his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, though at the time he was absorbed in his History of England; and in 1852, with his great work still uncompleted, he was delighted to be returned again to Parliament by his old constituency. But the truth is, we have been given thus far only the dark side of the picture. There is a silver lining also to the cloud. The life of a representative of the people has of course its compensations.
Still, the tribulations of an M.P. are undoubtedly many. There are, to begin with, the torments of the post. Cobden, in a letter to a
friend early in 1846, when his name as the leader of the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws was in all men’s mouths, gives a glimpse into the contents, half laughable and half pathetic, of the letter-bag of an M.P. He says:
First, half the mad people in the country who are still at large, and they are legion, address their incoherent ravings to the most notorious man of the hour. Next, the kindred tribe who think themselves poets, who are more difficult than the mad people to deal with, send their doggerel and solicit subscriptions to their volumes, with occasional requests to be allowed to dedicate them. Then there are the Jeremy Diddlers, who begin their epistles with high-flown compliments upon my services to the millions, and always wind up with a request that I will bestow a trifle upon the individual who ventures to lay his distressing case before me. To add to my miseries, people have now got an idea that I am influential with the Government, and the small place-hunters are at me.
Cobden supplied a specimen of the begging letters he was accustomed to receive. It was from a lady asking him to become her “generous and noble-minded benefactor.” As she desired to begin to do something for herself, she hoped he would procure her a loan of £5,000 “to enable her to rear poultry for London and other large market towns.” In another letter, written July 14, 1846, after the taxes on bread-stuffs had been repealed and the Corn Law League disbanded, Cobden says:
I thought I should be allowed to be forgotten after my address to my constituents. But every post brings me twenty or thirty letters and such letters! I am teased to death by place-hunters of every degree, who wish me to procure them Government appointments. Brothers of peers— aye, “honourables”—are amongst the number. I have but one answer for all: “I would not ask a favour of the Ministry to serve my own brother.” I often think what must be the fate of Lord John, or Peel, with half the needy aristocracy knocking at the Treasury doors.
2
Happily, things have greatly improved since the time of Cobden. It is probable that the average elector still fails to see that his
representative deserves any gratitude or thanks for his services in Parliament. On the contrary, the elector may think that it is he who is entitled to some return for having helped his representative to a seat in the House of Commons in preference to another who was equally eager for the honour. The spectacle of so many men competing for the voluntary service of the State in the capacity of a Member of Parliament cannot but tend to convince the ordinary elector that he is conferring a favour on the particular candidate for whom he votes. Constituents, certainly, are often very exacting. And as the representative desires to retain his seat, he cannot afford to ignore a letter from even the humblest and obscurest of the electors. The General Election may come round again with unexpected suddenness, bringing with it the day of reckoning for the Member who has been neglectful of communications from his constituents. Then it is that the voter, however humble, however obscure, can help to make or mar the prospect of the Member’s return to Westminster. The worst of it is that some constituents will unreasonably persist in asking for things impossible. In the post-bag of the M.P. appointments used to be greatly in demand. There was a time when the M.P. had some patronage to distribute in the way of nominations to posts in the Customs and the Inland Revenue, for which no examination was required, should the Party he supported be in power. But that good time, or bad, is gone and for ever. The throwing open of the Civil Service to competition deprived the M.P. of this sort of small change, which he once was able to scatter among the electors so as to reward past services and secure future support. Now he has absolutely nothing in his gift, except, perhaps, a nomination for any vacant sub-post office in his constituency. Yet numbers of the electors still imagine there are many comfortable posts in the public service which are to be had merely for the saying of a word by their representatives to the Minister of the Department concerned. An example of what the M.P. has occasionally to put up with may be seen in the terms of a blunt and abusive epistle— admittedly a very rare one—sent by a disappointed office-seeker to the man he says “he carried in on his own shoulders” at the last election. It opened: “You’re a fraud, and you know it. I don’t care a
rap for the billet or the money either, but you could hev got it for me if you wasn’t so mean. Two pound a week ain’t any more to me than 40 shillin’s is to you, but I objekt to bein’ maid a fool of.” It went on: “Soon after you was elected by my hard workin’, a feller here wanted to bet me that You wouldn’t be in the House more than a week before you made a ass of yourself. I bet him a Cow on that as I thort you was worth it then. After I got Your Note sayin’ you deklined to ackt in the matter I driv the Cow over to the Feller’s place an’ told him he had won her.” And thus concluded: “That’s orl I got by howlin’ meself Hoarse for you on pole day, an’ months befoar. I believe you think you’ll get in agen. I don’t. Yure no man. An’ I doant think yure much of a demercrat either. I lowers meself ritin to so low a feller, even tho I med him a member of parlerment.”
Other electors argue that as M.P.’s are law-makers they should consequently be able to rescue law-breakers from the clutches of the police and gaolers. Accordingly there are appeals for the remission of fines imposed on children for breaking windows, and even to get sentences of penal servitude revoked. The respectable tradesman on the verge of bankruptcy, who could be restored to a sound financial position by the loan of £100, is perhaps the worst pest of all the cadging letter-writers. He usually declares that he not only voted for his representative, but also attended every meeting that gentleman addressed in the course of the election. The best reply the M.P. could make to such an attempt to fleece him is to advise his correspondent to attend more to business and less to politics; but he probably never makes it, for he can rarely afford to speak out his mind to a constituent. An Irish Member who was elected for an Ulster constituency after a close contest showed me a letter he got from one of his supporters asking for some favour. “I voted for you under thirteen different names,” said the writer, “and could I do more for you than that?” No Member would think of offending so invaluable a supporter. Inventors are also of the plagues from which the M.P. suffers. The man who knows how to make soap out of sawdust writes glowing letters about the fortune awaiting a company which would work the process. Almost every post brings samples of
tonics and boxes of lozenges calculated to transform the harshest croak into the clearest and mellowest of voices. “I shall be thankful for a testimonial,” said the maker of one mixture, “that after you had used my specific the House was spellbound by the music of your tones, and I guarantee to extend your fame by publishing it, with your portrait, broadcast.” Tradesmen are very importunate. For instance, the Labour Members receive circulars from too enterprising firms soliciting their custom for things which, it was declared, were most requisite for the maintenance of the state and dignity becoming a Member of Parliament. From one firm a Member, fresh from working in the coalmines, had a tender for a Court dress of black velvet, to cost, with sword, only £50. A company of wine merchants offered to stock with the choicest brands the wine-cellar of the establishment they presumed he was about to set up in London.
The day after the announcement of a birth in a Member’s family a van pulled up at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament containing three different sorts of perambulators. The tradesman who brought them was extremely indignant because the police refused him admission to the House to display their good points and conveniences to the happy father! Poets ask for subscriptions to publish their works, or, enclosing some doggerel verses as samples, appeal for orders for odes for the next General Election. “If you would quote in the House a verse from my volume, Twitterings in the Twilight, what a grand advertisement I’d get!” wrote one rhymester to his representative. “You might say something like this: ‘One of the most delightful collections of poems it has ever been my good fortune to come across is Mr. Socrates Wilkin’s Twitterings in the Twilight. Could the situation in which the Empire finds itself be more happily touched off than in the following verse of that eminent poet?’ and then go on to quote some lines from my book, which I enclose.” Members who are lawyers and doctors are expected by a large section of their constituents to give professional advice for nothing. If one of these unreasonable persons has a dispute with his landlord as to the amount of rent due, or finds it impossible to
recover a debt, he expects, as a matter of course, his representative, if a gentleman learned in the law, to help him out of his difficulty; or, if a doctor, he favours him with long and incoherent accounts of mysterious complaints from which he has suffered for years. The M.P. is also expected to throw oil on disturbed domestic waters. Here is a specimen of a communication which is by no means uncommon:
DEAR SIR,
Me and the wife had a bit of a tiff last Saturday night, and she won’t make it up. If you just send her a line saying Bill’s all right, she will come round. She thinks the hell of a lot of you since you kissed the nipper the day you called for our votes.
But pity the poor M.P. who receives from a female voter so embarrassing a letter as the following:
HONOURED SIR,
I hear that Mr. Balfour is not a married man. Something tells me that I would make the right sort of wife for him. I am coming to London to-morrow, and will call at the House of Commons to see you, hoping you will get me an introduction to the honourable gentleman. I am only thirty years of age, and can do cooking and washing.
AGNES MERTON.
P.S. Perhaps if Mr. Balfour would not have me, you would say a word for me to one of the policemen at the House.
During the evening the Member who received this strange epistle cautiously ventured into the Central Hall, and, sure enough, espied an eccentric-looking woman in angry controversy with a constable, who was trying to induce her to go away. But she refused to leave, and ultimately found sympathetic companions in the crazy old party who has haunted the place for years in the hope that some day she will induce the Government to restore the £5,000,000 of which she declares they have robbed her, and the other lady, younger, but just as mad, who is convinced that some M.P. has married her secretly and left her to starve, and has come to Westminster to claim him “before all the world.”
The Member of Parliament is liable to receive other communications of even less flattering and more exasperating character. Bribes are occasionally dangled before him through the post. Will he allow his name to be used in the floating of a company, or in the advertising of some article of common use or a patent medicine? Will he use his influence in obtaining a Government contract for a certain firm? If he will, there is a cheque for so-and-so at his disposal. In the course of a debate in the House of Commons on the payment of Members, John Burns, for many years a wellknown Liberal Minister, evoked both laughter and applause by reading his reply to an offer of £50 received during his previous service as a Labour representative if he obtained for a person in Belfast a vacant collectorship of taxes. “Sir,” he wrote, “you are a scoundrel. I wish you were within reach of my boot.”
But the sane and the righteous give the M.P. more annoyance than the knavish and the crazy. Think of the numerous local functions— religious, social, and political—to which the Member of Parliament is invited! When a meeting is being organized in the constituency, naturally the first thought of its promoters is to try to get the Member to attend. The more conspicuous he is in Parliament, and therefore the more likely to attract an audience, the greater is the number of these invitations; and if he fails to respond, the more widespread is the dissatisfaction among his baulked constituents. He is expected to preside at the inaugural meetings of local amateur dramatic societies and local naturalists’ field clubs, and “to honour with his presence” the beanfeasts of local friendly societies. The literary institution, designed to keep young men of the constituency out of the public-houses, must be opened by him. He must attend entertainments of a mixed political and musical sort, at which his speech is sandwiched between a sentimental song and a comic.
But perhaps the Member of Parliament is most worried by the appeals to his generosity and charity which pour in upon him in aid of churches, chapels, mission-halls, schools, working men’s
institutes, hospitals, asylums, cricket and football clubs, and in fact societies and institutions of all sorts and sundry. It is only proper that if money be needed for an excellent local purpose, the representative of the district in Parliament should be included in the appeal. Many wealthy Members of Parliament spend from £1,000 to £4,000 a year on local charities, and they spend it willingly when the objects appear to them to be deserving. But of the 707 M.P.’s there are never a great many who can be described as wealthy.
Besides that, many representatives—among them being some of the most charitable of men—always refuse to send contributions to local objects, influenced by a sense of honour and the fear that it might be regarded as bribing the electors. In so doing they run a grave risk of being misunderstood by their constituents. If a Member of Parliament should refuse to help in providing them with coals, blankets, footballs, cricket-bats, big drums, billiard-tables, church steeples, sewing-machines, he is set down as mean, and numbers of his constituents vow that he shall not have their votes again at the General Election. There is a story told that when John Morley was seeking re-election for Newcastle-on-Tyne an elector who was asked to vote for this statesman of the highest and purest ideals indignantly exclaimed: “Not me! What has John Morley ever done for the Rugger Football Club?”
The representative is to be commended by all means in resisting these illegitimate demands. Macaulay, when Member for Edinburgh, was asked to subscribe to a local football club. “Those were not the conditions upon which I undertook to represent Edinburgh,” he answered. “In return for your generous confidence I offer parliamentary service, and nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objectionable that I must plainly say I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds than comply with it. If our friends want a Member who will find them in public diversions, they can be at no loss. I know twenty people who, if you elect them to Parliament, would gladly treat you to a race and a race-ball each month. But I shall not be very easily induced to believe that Edinburgh is disposed to select her representatives on such a principle.” On the other hand, there is
something to be said for the constituents. Surely they may very properly ask: “From whom can we more reasonably seek aid for our deserving local charities than from our Member of Parliament?” They recall to mind his accessibility and graciousness while he was “nursing” the constituency. Was he not ever ready to preside at the smoking concerts of the Sons of Benevolence, to sing songs or recite at the mothers’ meetings, to hand round the cake at the children’s tea parties, to kick off at the football contests?
His speeches are also remembered. Did he not regard service in the House of Commons while he was seeking it more as a distinction and privilege than as a public duty? Did he not tell the electors from a hundred platforms that for all time he was absolutely at their service? Did he not come to them literally hat in hand begging the favour—mind you, the “favour”—of their vote and influence? Yet to this cynical end has it all come, that, badgered by requests for subscriptions to this, that or the other, he replies—to quote the prompt, emphatic and printed answer which one representative has sent to all such appeals: “I was elected for —— as Member of Parliament, not as Relieving Officer.”
4
In the House of Commons itself some disappointments also await the M.P. The motives which induce men to seek for a seat in Parliament are many and diverse; but there is hardly a doubt whatever that the main reason is a genuine desire to serve the State and promote the well-being and happiness of the community. Accordingly, in the first flush of enthusiasm after election our representatives zealously set about informing themselves of the subjects which are likely to engage their attention in Parliament. But soon comes a rude awakening, bringing with it the first of the disappointments that await them. They find that to instruct themselves properly in questions that are ripening for legislation would leave them very little time for the calls of business and social life.
The breakfast table of the M.P. is heaped almost every morning during the session with parliamentary papers of one kind or another —Blue Books, Bills, reports and returns. Blue Books are popularly supposed to be unattractive reading. This is a mistake. They may look ominously ponderous in outward appearance, but their matter is not therefore portentously dull. With a little delving, illuminating facts for the serious student of the condition of the people—the supreme and all-embracing question of politics—come to light. There are, however, not only too much of them, but too many. On an average, eighty are issued every year, making an impossible demand on the attention of even the most conscientious representative. The Bills are more inviting than the Blue Books, for, embodying as they do the fads and hobbies of the 707 Members of the House of Commons, they bring one into touch with curious manifestations of common human nature and individual political ideals. About 300 of them are introduced every session. After the formality of a first reading, they are printed and circulated among the representatives, who are expected to make themselves acquainted with their provisions.
It is to be feared that many M.P.’s give up this task in despair. Instead of attempting to arrive at independent conclusions by personal investigation and study, they are content to rely upon their Party leaders to direct them on the right path in regard to Government measures dealing with the main public questions of the day, and upon their Whips as to whether they should oppose or support the Bills of private Members. Yet it is not always plain sailing, even when the lazy course is pursued of just giving one’s ear to the leaders on both sides attacking and defending. “The worst effect on myself resulting from listening to the debates in Parliament,” writes Monckton Milnes, “is that it prevents me from forming any clear political opinion on any subject.” Of the 300 Bills brought in every session, very few are passed. So supreme is the command of the Ministry over the time of the House of Commons that the private Members have little chance of carrying legislation. Only the Bills of the Government set out on their course through
both Houses of Parliament with a fair prospect of reaching the Statute Book.
Furthermore, the M.P. who is ambitious “the listening Senate to command,” also soon discovers that the opportunities for talking are flagrantly restricted in the interest of the Government. He may have devoted many days to the making and colouring of artificial flowers of rhetoric with which to decorate his speech in a great debate. Sometimes he may get the chance to deliver it in a House almost empty, and containing but two interested listeners—one the hon. Member who hopes to follow, and is impatient of his prolixity, and the other his wife in the Ladies’ Gallery, fuming at the indifference with which his eloquent periods are being received. That is bad enough; but there is a worse fate still. He may sit night after night on the pounce to “catch the Speaker’s eye” and yet fail to fix the attention of that wandering orb. Meanwhile he may hear his arguments and his epigrams made use of by luckier men, who probably got them in the Library from the same shelf, the same book, the same page as himself. Finally, the debate may be brought to an end, leaving him baulked in his design, with a mind further oppressed by the burden of a weighty unspoken speech. Then his constituents say unpleasant things of him because they do not see his name in the newspaper reports. He is neglecting his duty, or he is an empty-minded “silent Member,” who, having nothing to say, says it.
There is an old proverb at Westminster which declares that “they are the wisest part of Parliament who use the greatest silence.” Again, in the opinion of the leaders of the Party in office he is the most useful of Members who never consumes valuable time by speaking, but is ever at hand to vote when the bells ring out the summons to the division. The man who always votes at his Party’s call and never dreams of thinking for himself at all is to be found by the score in the House of Commons. But to many another M.P. it must be a sore trial to find his opinions often dictated by his leaders and his movements in and out of the House controlled by the Whips. Party discipline is strict in all the political groups, and violations of it
are rarely condoned. The speech of the Member who is sincere and courageous enough to take up an attitude independent of his Party in regard to some question of the day is received with jeers by his colleagues, and, what is perhaps more disconcerting, with cheers by the fellows on the other side. There are, to be sure, representatives to whom the House of Commons is but a vastly agreeable diversion from other pleasures and pursuits. Imagine the feelings of such an easy-going Member when, on a dull night off, an urgently worded and heavily underscored communication from the Whips demanding his immediate attendance is delivered by special messenger at some most inopportune moment, perhaps as he is just sitting down to a pleasant dinner or is leaving his house for the Frivolity Theatre. If, prone as he is to yield to the temptation of the flesh, he should ignore this peremptory call of Party duty, he is held guilty, like the crank and the faddist, of a grave breach of discipline. His past services in the division lobbies—on nights when the proceedings in the House were to him a most enjoyable lark—are forgotten. He gets a solemn lecture from the Chief Whip on the enormity of his offence. Worse still, his name is published in an official black list of defaulters, or a nasty paragraph exposing his neglect of duty appears in the newspaper which most widely circulates in his constituency.
And yet what model M.P., Liberal or Unionist or Labour, with all his sincere attention to the desires, the whims, the caprices of his constituents, with all his willing surrender of private judgment to his leaders, of personal pleasures to the Whips, can confidently feel that his seat is safe? It is hard to get into Parliament. To remain there is just as difficult. The insecurity of the tenure of a seat in the House of Commons is perhaps the greatest drawback of public life. Many a man with ambition and talent for office does years of splendid service for his Party in Opposition. The General Election comes. His Party is victorious at the polls. But he himself has been worsted in the fight, and he has the mortification of seeing another receive the office which would have been his in happier circumstances. To such a man with his capacity for public life, with his keen enjoyment of
